Closed Captioning

sprdthword wrote on 2/29/2016, 5:34 PM

I have recorded some movies from TV onto my set top DVD recorder and they include closed captioning. Is there any way to edit these movies - e.g. take out all the commercials, etc., and still retain the closed captioning? I do not want sub titles - I want true closed captioning, embedded in the movie just like it was when recorded from the TV/Cable box.

I have tried using handbrake as well as CCExtractor, but these don't really help me when I am editing in Movie Edit Pro 15 Plus, because after editing and burning a new DVD, the closed captions are all gone.

Thanks for any help.

Comments

browj2 wrote on 2/29/2016, 7:26 PM

Hi,

MEP 15 or 2015? There is a big difference.

When you bring the video into the timeline, do you see the closed-caption?. If not, then it wasn't imported with the video and there is nothing that MEP can do about this. If the captioning is there, then it will show up when exported because it is part of the video.

To remove the commercials, you simply cut them out by cutting on each side and removing that secton. That is one of the main tasks of movie editing. Let us know if you don't know how to edit a video.

sprdthword wrote on 2/29/2016, 9:26 PM

Hi,

Thanks for the quick response. It's MEP 2015 Plus.

Taking out the commercials, etc. is easy and one of the things I like about MEP is it's user friendliness. Working with closed captioning is something I have not dealt with though.

I do not see it, but then I also don't know where I should see it. Should the captioning be showing up in the edit window since it is embedded in the video section? Should it be showing up as a separate track like titling? I know the titling effects has the options for small and large subtitles, but as I understand the difference, subtitles in the digital age are very different from closed captioning, and I have a special device that reads only closed captioning before sending it to the TV.

When I used handbrake to rip the DVD and then played that mp4 in VLC, it seemed like it had the closed captioning - like it would come up and say "[man speaking in German]" - the kinds of things you would see with closed captioning. But when I imported that file into MEP, I saw nothing, and when I burned it to a DVD and played it in VLC the captions were gone.

browj2 wrote on 3/1/2016, 12:12 AM

MEP cannot read closed captioned files as far as I know, and it cannot create them. It can read a video file of the movie and a separate video file showing the captioning on a second track. How this second file is obtained, I don't know. The same with your recorder, I don't know how it records both and keeps them separate.

AFAIK, closed-captioning is normally not embedded in the video; it is run separately and just overlaid on the base video upon demand. Otherwise, one would not be able to turn it off. Take a picture of someone holding a sign. Print it out, look at it. You see a picture of a person holding a sign. There is no way to turn the sign off in that printed photo. A video track in MEP is the same. You either have the caption embedded in the clip or you don't. If you don't, then you would need a second file on a higher numbered track with transparency, just like a text object in MEP, in order to see the caption.

How to get the caption file, I don't know. If John E. Baker jumps in, maybe he knows. Otherwise, try to get some help by searching the topic on the internet. It is an interesting question.

johnebaker wrote on 3/1/2016, 1:59 AM

. . . . closed-captioning is normally not embedded in the video . . . .

That depends on the source of the video - if NTSC then the CC is embedded in the video signal, if EU/UK and other PAL nations, then the CC are transmitted on the Teletext channel 888 and whether ripping the DVD has made the captions open ie they are permanently on.

If the video has the CC embedded then it may be possible to use an extractor (search the Internet for one) to get them out as a SRT file. However MEP cannot recognise this file and you would have to create subtitles from it.

The SRT file is a standard text file with timings and the text, and can be opened with any text editting program and copy and paste into titles in MEP.

I use a basic text editor ie Notepad++ for this because there is no formatting which can be transferred to MEP ie avoid using Microsoft Word or any other advanced text editting program.

You do have to do a work around ie use 2 timelines, one without the subtitles and one with which can be selectable from the DVD menu. See this tutorial about creating a multi movie DVD.

The only issue is, you cannot turn on/off the subtitles on the fly while watching the DVD.

HTH

John EB